to be irritated by this work email?

[BoldChild]

Note: This is a large international company, and I am a very tiny fish in a very large pond, but I’ll still paraphrase to avoid any major identifiers

An email went around our (fully remote) company today by new management and went a little something like this:

”Hello, everyone. As this year has been hard on our business, we have decided to implement the following rule: If you are behind in target, you will have to report to your local office and attend the office for a minimum of 4 days. This is so your manager can oversee your daily work and ensure you are doing your job. Your manager will track every phone call and email, and how many clients/customers you reach out to. You will continue to report to the office until your numbers to pick up.

Failure to meet targets will result in an immediate requirement to report to the office. This is non-optional, and everyone must comply. We will not accept any excuses.”

NOW… I am totally on board with the whole “if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, there’s an issue there” but the nature of the email really just irks me.

It reminds me of being back in school, with a teacher threatening to sit beside you to make sure you’ve done your maths instead of talking to your friends. Like if employees do not show up the office, they’ll call our parents.

Am I being unreasonable to feel this is very condescending? And unfair to those who may be struggling due to reasons that aren’t their fault (mental health, illness, personal issues, etc)? These people will be called out in front of their entire team and marched into the offices against their will, and it just seems totally unfair to do to someone instead of handling any issues privately.

I’m honestly considering handing in my notice

I’m also on the employers side. There’s one or two in my office who WFH as much as possible and it’s clear every time they do their productivity drops by at least 50%.

The rest of us in the team are absolutely sick of it, we’d LOVE our manager to step up and lay the law down this way. It doesn’t just affect the company, the colleagues that do work hard get fed up with it too.

I can imagine WFH is a dream come true for lazy piss takers. I don't really agree with fully remote working tbh, I think hybrid working is a good compromise.

@LakieLady I don't disagree with the underlying issue but do disagree with the handling of it and think it should have been an individual email to the individuals concerned. Is this a very 'sales' dominated job with very specific targets OP??

Wow that's exceptionally poor management. If people aren't meeting your targets then you manage those individuals confidentially. Everyone else you assume they are doing their jobs if their output is fine. I'm a remote worker after leaving an organisation that behaved in similar ways to this (my performances was absolutely fine). Professionals shouldn't be treated like naughty children and I would refuse to work for an organisation with such an antiquated attitude!

There are better ways of dealing with it than this though.

One of my team was under-performing and suspected to be skiving. They were put on a performance management plan, and they realised that their skive was going to be rumbled. They got another job and left.

Heard recently that they didn't last the full probation period at their new job.

I question why this needed to be an email sent to every employee. Managers could have been briefed about this policy and then have spoken to the staff affected individually.

Communication is the number 1 issue in most organisations as far as I can tell. It seems senior managers forget how to communicate with people to motivate them and seem to default to the easiest methods of mass, indiscriminate communication - pure laziness.

Such a patronising email.

The same message could have been way more positively communicated by saying something along the lines of 'this year has been tough for everyone and we understand that some people have been struggling to reach their targets - we want to support them. If you're currently x behind where you need to be, your manager will be in touch to arrange an in-office coaching programme that will help you achieve blah blah and provide you with the support you need', yada yada.

The sentiment and objective is probably fine, but the sense of threat in their email is a bit 'beatings will continue until morale improves'!!

It's enabled my team to do loads more. We're running caseloads 3 x the size we had pre-Covid. A lot of stuff we used to do F2F with clients is now done over the phone, so we're not spending hours driving across the county. A lot more is being done electronically than before, and there aren't as many distractions as when we were working from the office.

My caseload is bigger than that my full-time skiving colleague had, and I only do 17 hours pw.

So your contract states you are a homeworker?

I can see where they are coming from. If you aren’t hitting targets when remote working then being in the office can help with coaching and improvement plans.

If you love being at home surely this will help incentivise you to meet targets and be productive?

^

God spare me

The measure is definitely fair enough imo but the way they've worded it is very unprofessional, as if in a micro-managed, minimum wage, low-level job.

I think for the right people it works but there are a lot who take the pee.

*I can see where they are coming from. If you aren’t hitting targets when remote working then being in the office can help with coaching and improvement plans.

If you love being at home surely this will help incentivise you to meet targets and be productive?*

Exactly. Win,win.

To me they seem pretty desperate and in financial difficulty so are trying another strategy. Perhaps they've been hit by poor productivity from people being at home and not working so they've taken action to save their business. Sounds like they may have a lot of people under target - whether that is due to poor productivity or economic climate who knows.

But it’s not “blowing back on everyone.” If you’re reaching your targets, you won’t need to go in. Only those not reaching their targets are being asked to attend the office.

Some people take the piss but some make need extra support so this is an easy way to find out. Then hopefully those that have mental health problems etc can get help and support.

When some people are slack, it can cause a bigger impact on workload of those around them.

No no no no no. I don't get the logic in this approach. Performers aren't being rewarded for hitting targets (nothing changes for them so there's no recognition of a job well done) and those not hitting targets have the demoralising trudge to the office to be belittled by their manager. Not really likely to increase productivity.

Have they tried rewarding better performance and this is the last resort?!

Me too.

I run a business and I'm totally sick to death of the piss taking and entitled stance.

I do agree though it's poor management to force people in that could have been dealt with better, and individually.

That’s piss poor management & completely a management issue. It should be dealt with by the manager & not be affecting the team, if a manager can’t deal with staff not doing their work then both the manager & staff in question need to be let go of

The email seems reasonable to me. If you're not meeting your targets then go back into the office so you can be managed as obviously you're not capable of wfh. Wish more places apuls do that!

It's probably aimed at one person who's not pulling their weight and instead of dealing with it one to one (or aswell as) with that person they have sent that out to everyone.

To bring another perspective, how do the managers feel about this? Have they been working from home too? Will they now be expected to be in the office for a week every time one of their employees misses a performance target? If not, how does a staff member being in the office help their manager to monitor their performance? If so, as a manager I would be looking for a new job PDQ.

It depends how reasonable and achievable the targets are. I've worked sales jobs where the targets were impossible to meet and other ones where I was able to exceed them by double the target amount every month.

I think this idea that everyone WFH is a lazy pisstaker is silly though. Many people in offices spend time on their phones or on Facebook or elsewhere online between actual work, they're just directing their time towards things they prefer to do when they're procrastinating at home. The fundamental thing is, it's human nature to procrastinate sometimes and to need mental breaks between or within tasks and employers who don't allow some leeway for that tend to have very high staff turnover because it's not realistic to expect people to be fully on all day every day especially in high-energy jobs.

They clearly don’t trust their staff do they. The first statement suggests they are in financial trouble which in itself would make me start looking for another job.

I see their point and the reasoning behind it but the communication is shocking.

Why shouldn't people have to show up and be accountable if they're underperforming? It's much easier for someone to be supported to improve where necessary when face to face. Without regular interaction, problems that are already there will continue and get worse in the interim.

It's not treating anyone like they're children; it's actually treating them like they have responsibilities and are part of a team.